David, Technology Lead for FMCG at PA Consulting, has 20 years of experience in research and development at senior levels in Unilever and PepsiCo, which included work across the supply chain. PA Consulting is an independent consulting, technology and innovation firm, with over 2,600 employees operating globally.
Ahead of the the REAP Conference 2016 on 9 November, Agri-Tech East interviewed David about the shift in mind set needed to tackle new challenges in the industry…
PA Consulting joined Agri-Tech East to see if we could help in both the creation and delivery of the market. It is a good meeting point for the market place – but are there ways of attracting big companies to invest in finding and scaling up technology to solve their challenges?
Our observation is that there is still a big gap between the large companies involved in the food supply chain and the SMEs who are driving innovation in agriculture. Our involvement in Agri-Tech East has highlighted this observation. PA Consulting is not here to compete with the guys who have created the latest and greatest device, we are here to help figure out the industrial application. We think we can help turn theory into practice when it comes to delivering the next revolution in agriculture.
Farming then and now
It’s easy to fantasise about the bucolic life of a farmer, getting up early and tilling the fields. Whilst the early starts haven’t really changed, the amount of information required to run an effective operation has. Integrating and making sense of data is one of the biggest challenges that a farmer faces. All this information is designed to help, but it doesn’t come without risks; even small mistakes in interpreting the mountain of data available can lead to lost crops and profits.
Compounding the data challenge, the world is changing around us. Whilst much agricultural knowledge is 'passed down through the generations', methods need to change not only to boost yield to feed a hungry world but also to mitigate the effects of climate change.
Alongside all these risks, it seems to us that there are many piecemeal, incompatible technology solutions. Our ‘Digital Agriculture’ report takes the assumption many other industries have reinvented themselves, with the result that the digital world has overtaken the analogue world – and the same is happening to farming.
'Digital Agriculture'
We have observed that over the last 10 to 20 years many industries have digitised. Telephones have gone from a thing on the wall with a cable to something in your pocket that connects to the internet. As for the financial industry, who remembers cheque books?
The rate determining step in the evolution of an industry is the ability of its innovators to build the business models to get new ideas into the marketplace. As industries digitise, innovations come from surprising angles and many incumbents can’t keep up. Large companies are investing huge sums in acquiring new capabilities; for instance, Monsanto has invested around $1 billion in recent years acquiring companies with promising new technologies. Globally, the digital agriculture industry is forecast to be worth $15 billion by 2021. However, many companies in the agro-science, machinery and technology sectors are struggling to position themselves for the future.
Coalescence
The agriculture industry model evolved out of the analogue world. Some companies – particularly those focused on machinery and technology, are open to new collaborations and undoubtedly this will create new products, new services and new industries for the benefit of the whole supply chain and ultimately, the end consumer.
The challenge for agriculture is that the market for digital agriculture is still nascent. There isn’t an obvious route to coalesce around new technology platforms. It’s not yet clear where digitising agriculture will create most value, or how to overcome the many barriers to technology adoption. However, many of the required technologies exist; it's about selection, application, proving them, prototyping them, building one, and getting it to work. This is where PA fits in: we can help reinvent industries by scaling up technologies and building markets.
For instance, if we were to reinvent crop protection, perhaps we would build a drone equipped with a laser, a camera and an intelligent processor. We might one day protect crops using physics, not chemistry. I haven’t yet seen why there won't be such a revolution, but I think to create it needs to be a bit of a push.
Using technology to turn data into information
Raw data is the key foundation to the digital revolution, but in itself it isn’t enough: the agriculture sector will need technology platforms to make sense of the data. These platforms are likely to evolve and converge; the winning platforms will be the ones that offer the clearest business benefit to the broadest range of stakeholders, whilst requiring minimal investment at the farm level.
One of the things we are looking at is mobile phone devices in the developing world. On a typical large farm, there may be hundreds of farmhands out in the fields, all with a phone on them – there is no reason why their phones shouldn’t generate information that is then fed back to the farm.
For instance, a microscope can be added onto a smartphone to look at leaf development. You don’t need to go to every plant in the farm, but a few plants can be chosen for a representative picture of an acre. It can then be worked out what the evolution is in that field and if it needs water and fertiliser for example. This is the kind of project we are working on – creating new knowledge by making use of what’s already there.
About PA Consulting
We are an award-winning global innovation, technology and consulting firm. We are empowered by our people and culture - multi-disciplinary teams from diverse backgrounds, skills and industries. Our style is passionate and provocatively collaborative, always striving to deliver and create lasting impact.
For over 70 years, we have partnered with organisations to help them innovate and grow.
We envision and deliver new businesses, brands, products and services, and help our clients build their innovation and technology strategies and capabilities.
REAP 2016
At our REAP Conference exhibit, we will share how the wider market views technological innovation in Agriculture, help to understand where a competitive advantage can be found within these innovations, and demonstrate that the technologies for this exciting future are closer than we think.
We'll be showcasing:
- A “lab on a smartphone”
- A small, wireless sensor which allows remote monitoring for only a few pence
- An air quality sensor to fit in your pocket
- A low power, long range network which can pull in data from multiple sensors for a one-time fixed cost
We’ve also created a vision of the future which builds a number of existing technologies into a thought-provoking farm of the future.